V. I. Lenin

Introduction to the Leaflet of the Don Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. “To the Citizens of Russia”{1}

Written:Written after May 9 (22), 1902Published:First published in 1931 in. V. Pleskov’s bookV gody boyevoi yunouti. Molodyozh nakanune pervoi revolutsii(Fighting Days of Youth. Young People on the Eve of the First Revolution), Molodaya Gvardia Publishers.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 41,

      pages69.2-70.1.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Wegive in full the splendid proclamation issued by the Don
Committee of our Party. It shows that the Social-Democrats
know hoxv to appreciate the heroic behavipur of men like Balmashev, without,
however, falling into the error of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries.{2}The
Social-Democrats bring to the fore the workers’ (and peasants’) movement. They
make their demands on the government on behalf of the Working class and the
whole people, but without issuing any threats of further attempts and
assassinations. Theyregard terrorism as one of the possible ancillary means, and not as aspecialtactical method justifying separation from revolutionary
Social-Democracy.

{1}The leaflet of the Don Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. “To the Citizens of
Russia”, issued on May 9 (22), 1902, was circulated among workers in a
total of 2,000 copies. It said that the blood of Balmashev, who had been
sentenced to death by a military tribunal for the assassination of Minister
Sipyagin,

“will wash the eyes of the blinded philistines and make them see the
indescribable horror of the autocracy in Russia. Let them see that our
struggle against it is growing and spreading. Masses of peasants are
already coming to the assistance of the workers and a handful of
unhypocritical intellectuals. The first signs are already in evidence: in
Tula the soldiers have refused to shoot at the strikers; a peasant uprising
has broken out in Poltava and Kharkov gubernias. For centuries the muzhik
there had been working for the benefit of his lord, for centuries he had
suffered oppression and privation, and his patience has finally come to an
end.”

The tsarist government hastened to the rescue of the landowners and started
fierce reprisals. The leaflet went on: “We have had enough of this slavish
and ignominious forbearance, we have had enough of sacrifice.... Citizens!
Stem the endless tide of this horrible blood letting! Overthrow the
autocracy!”

p. 69

{2}Socialist-Revolutionaries(S.R.s)—a petty-bourgeois
party in Russia which originated at the end of 1901 and the beginning of
1902 from the merger of various Narodnik groups and circles (the Union of
Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries,
etc.). The views of the S.R.s were a jumble of Narodnik and revisionist
ideas; they tried, as Lenin put it,to “patch up the rents in the Narodnik ideas with bits of fashionable
opportunist ‘criticism’ of Marxism” (see present edition, Vol. 9,
p. 310). During the First World War, most of the S.R.s took a
social-chauvinist stand.

Afterthe bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917, the S.R.s
and the Mensheviks were the mainstay of the counter revolutionary bourgeois
and landowner Provisional Government, while the party’s leaders
(Avksentyev, Kerensky and Chernov) were in the government.

Atthe end of November 1917, the Left wing of the S.R.s formed an
independent party of Left S.R.s. In an effort to retain their influence
among the peasants, the Left S.R.s gave nominal recognition to the Soviet
power and entered into an agreement with the Bolsheviks, but soon began to
fight against the Soviets.

Duringthe foreign armed intervention and the Civil War, the S.R.s were
engaged in counter-revolutionary subversive activity, giving active support
to the interventionists and whiteguards, taking part in
counter-revolutionary plots and organising terroristic acts against the
leaders of the Soviet state and the Communist Party. After the Civil War,
the S.R.s continued their hostile activity inside the country and among the
whiteguard émigré.

p. 69